Engineering Ethics and the Ubiquity of Undergraduate Defense Funding: A Conflict of Interest

Undergraduate engineering programs have long been bound to the United States defense industry, and this industry has long been reliant upon these universities to produce engineers capable of developing new militaristic technologies. There is perhaps no field of engineering as affected by this relationship as aerospace engineering—a field which perpetually turns out engineers to design and herald the newest hypersonic technology the United States relies upon. Simply put, the United States is what can only be described as an aerospace nation. This is principally the result of the broader preceding historical context–specifically of the second World War and the Cold War—which must be investigated to understand how this war machine arose. Furthermore, the Department of Defense (DoD) and numerous private military contractors (PMC) have encroached upon these undergraduate engineering programs through the means of career fairs and recruitment events, which are justified through direct contributions made from these bodies to the schools themselves. These organizations have continued to exploit the aforementioned relationship between engineering programs and the defense industry, a relationship which is mutually beneficial to these parties, but also ultimately morally compromising. This paper aims to discuss how this issue arose, and how it has manifested in student discourse in recent years.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering

STS Advisor: Pedro Augusto Francisco